The coach at 'Last Chance U' doesn't want the show to leave Scooba

Once again, Buddy Stephens doesn’t like what he saw — and the rest of the country started seeing today — from Buddy Stephens.

“I’m still a mess,” he said Friday, the same day that Season 2 of ‘Last Chance U,’ a Netflix docu-series following his East Mississippi Lions football team, began streaming. “I feel like there was an effort there, but I’m still a work in progress.”

Even though Stevens ended up cringing at himself — he loses his temper frequently, has an ugly blowup with his longest tenured coach and is criticized by the beloved academic advisor, Brittany Wagner — he thinks the cameras should return for a third season.

Herein you find what makes Buddy Stephens, seemingly the personification of a blustery football coach, an interesting character: He hates a lot of how he’s depicted, wishes more sincere moments with his players would have been captured, has trouble deciding if, given the chance to do it all over again, he would or not but … is ready with a full-blown argument for why the crew should return to Scooba, Miss. in a few weeks.

“There’s a whole lotta story still to be written,” he said. “All new kids, new coaches on the offensive side of the ball, a new defensive coordinator. It would show a whole new view.”

Photo courtesy of Steve Dietl/Netflix

For what it’s worth, director Greg Whiteley told For The Win he wasn’t sure whether Stephens would welcome the cameras again and was considering focusing on a different team for a potential third season of the show. Stephens said he hasn’t heard from Whiteley about whether the crew plans to return. Camp begins Aug. 7.

Throughout Season 2 Stephens is clearly frustrated with the cameras and he admitted that it was more difficult to ignore them during the second year of filming. The crew would flock to him at the earliest sign of a meltdown, which often hastened the meltdown. He called it the most stressful season of his career.

Still, he’d like the cameras to come back. He wondered whether the country wouldn’t be let down to not be able to follow his team again next year.

Stephens says his 2017 squad will be the fastest he’s ever had — recall that he’s won three national titles — and also believes the team’s new academic advisor, Abby Jenkins, would be a compelling character.

“There would be so much to show,” he said. “She’s doing the same thing as Brittany but she does it her way. Brittany was not the first person to love the kids, not the first person to walk a kid to class. That’s just the thing: she had her way of doing it, and now she’s moved on. She went to another job but she’s already left that and is trying something else. Abby does it differently. She’s a little bit more hardcore. That would be interesting to watch.”

Photo courtesy of Steve Dietl/Netflix

Stephens and Wagner never appear together in Season 2, other than on the sideline at games. While Wagner expressed bitterness over the way Stephens treated her, the players and assistant coaches, Stephens saw no strain in the relationship.

“We never talked after September 4th or 5th” he said, “that that was fine, we had a coach liaison and Brittany handled what she needed to.”

“Did we agree on everything? Absolutely not,” he said. “But she’s fantastic at doing her job. She’s fantastic at that. There’s nothing I can say about her work, so I don’t know where the rub is or anything like that.”

Stephens was surprised to see Wagner taking calls from other coaches and potential future employers in front of the players when he watched Season 2.

“She could have had some of those conversations away from the kids and not at her present job,” he said. “Had I known that, I would have had a problem with it.”

Stephens expressed regret for a sideline interaction he had with offensive coordinator Marcus Wood in the team’s bowl game. Stephens abruptly stripped Wood of his play-calling duties after Wood mistakenly called for a timeout when he thought the Lions had too many men on the field.

Wood, the only coach left from when Stephens arrived at Scooba, stepped down after the season to take on a fundraising job.

“That’s one of those things, and I’ve been on a lot of sidelines, it happens and then it’s a personnel issue and we try to deal with it,” Stephens said. “And, you know, it happened. I wish it didn’t happen. But it did. And you have to deal with it. Marcus decided to move on and I wish him and his family nothing but the best.”

Stephens knows his split-second temper is so often his undoing. He attempts, in Season 2, to calm down by limiting his swearing and consulting the scripture more often. He has mixed results. I asked what he’s doing now to try to remain calmer, longer and with more consistency.

“It’s in my heart,” he said. “I have to set myself up for success each day, by the demeanor I start the day with and then, really, I just have to realize that in a lot of situations I just don’t have to blow it all up. You just don’t have to do that all the time.”

But, then again, maybe he does. Whiteley, the director, told me he thinks Stephens is particularly volatile because he has a short window in which to work with players who are focused on moving to Division I instead of winning, which is what Stephens will be judged on.

Photo courtesy of Steve Dietl/Netflix

“Without a doubt that is the case,” Stephens said. “You could coach a lot differently if you have more time. But these kids, they have to grow up fast. … I know what they’re going to go up against in the future though, and I know those things can be pretty cruel. It’s my job to prepare them for that.”

Stephens believes Whiteley and his crew did a “fantastic” job creating an “authentic” show and that no other sports documentary has ever come closer to full transparency. But he admits that there are still many things happening behind closed doors, some of which may make him seem more relatable and compassionate.

“There were certain meetings with players I didn’t let them into, because I knew in 30 years a kid would be watching that show and say, ‘Hey, that’s my grandfather,’ and I didn’t want that to be part of their legacy,” he said.

The cameras do not capture that side of Stephens, nor do they find players who gush with praise for their coach. Isaiah Wright, a running back who appeared on both seasons, says Stephens is a great coach who fails to relate to his players. Ronald Ollie, the defensive lineman who became a viewer favorite in Season 1, is more blunt in his second-season cameo: “[Expletive] that boy,” he says.

“Ollie’s Ollie,” Stephens says. “And sometimes people forget what’s been done for them. … I guarantee you not every player at every institution likes his coach. But he was a good player for us and I wish him all the success in the world. Maybe someday Ollie and I can sit down and talk.”

In conversation Stephens is jovial and whip-smart, a focused coach with clear thoughts. The cameras disproportionately don’t show that, which he understands. Just as he knows that blowing it up is not always right.

But then again …

“I owe those kids to push them as hard as I can push them because they may not have been pushed like that before and I know they’re going to get pushed like that in future,” he said. “That part of it I wish would come through more. Sometimes you don’t get to hug ’em up and love ’em up because you’re scared they’re going to slack off and loosen up a bit. You’ve got a job to help them take of their families later on in life whether that’s through academics or football or getting to a school with big-time alumni who will give them a job.”

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